In the dungeon of the Monument building, a circular room opens up like a cave. Hanging on the cement walls are mermaids, myths and mystery.
The Standard Bank winner for visual art, Lady Skollie (Laura Windvogel-Molifi) is finding her own method of preserving lost ancestral history in her exhibition Groot Gat.
Large artworks in crayon and ink are hung on the curved walls, while an animation of cave-like drawings moves gently across a projected rock wall.
The medium leads to bold black lines cut with vivid, earthy colours, depicting mermaids with serpent tales, mystical bodies swimming in golden water, fish heads leaping behind the sun.
Though Lady Skollie was unable to attend the National Arts Festival due to the arrival of a baby, a video recording plays on a loop in the gallery instead.
In it, she says: “Groot Gat was inspired by the fact that if you’re brown in SA you kind of have to deal with a big hole, a void, a gap, a forgetting within your own culture and within your own remembering.
“As an artist, I figured out that my paintings are what I use to fill this giant gap left by history and oppression and colonialism.
“Within my own practice, I love to tap into fantasy, to imagine a world where my culture was not nipped in the bud but where it has been left to bloom.
“A place where the San, the Khoi, the Griqua and all brown people on the southern tip of Africa have bloomed without being interrupted by colonialism and forgetting.
“Where cave drawings are not faded or scratched or small or vandalised. But they are giant and bright and blooming, just like my paintings.
“So-called coloured history is definitely defined by an omission, defined by a void of language and history, knowledge and tradition.
“Within the show, I’m trying to create a world where these cave drawings are large, they’re in charge and they define us as people.
“Where [they] are huge tapestries on cave walls instead of old forgotten, scraped-out pieces of land that we don’t own any more.”
Lady Skollie’s inspiration was drawn from Boesmansgat, a freshwater cave in the Northern Cape.
“Many years ago, Boesmansgat was an old fishing well or fishing hole that indigenous bushmen would use, but after the land was taken it became dormant and full of mud and now people challenge nature and they try to jump into it to see whether or not they can reach the other side.
“Within Groot Gat, I try to imagine a hole that is guarded by a giant cave drawing deity based on Dada.
“Dada is a woman who spent her days and her nights painting, drinking Black Label, and trying to connect back to what being brown, being Naru is within a South African context.
“Within my story of Die Groot Gat, Dada takes the form of a woman who is guarding a giant deep hole in a large, large cave.”
“Within the show, I’m trying to create a world where these cave drawings are large, they’re in charge and they define us as people. Where [they] are huge tapestries on cave walls instead of old forgotten, scraped-out pieces of land that we don’t own any more.”
— Lady Skollie
In the artwork Dada Coex’ae Qgam, in blank ink and crayon, a woman sits in a large cave, painting red figures onto golden walls.
Her face is serene, while behind her a dark blue opening depicts the stars beyond.
Lady Skollie says: “She is filling up the cave with paintings, trying to lure a next victim to jump in and see what is on the other side of that long, dark void.”
“I hope Groot Gat inspires [people] to think about where you are from and where you are going and how you want to be defined.
“Being brown here in SA is such a complex way of being, and if we don’t define it, other people will do it for us.
“So much of our heritage and tradition is unknown and it’s unfair.”
Speaking to the Dispatch, Lady Skollie said she started working on the exhibition in August last year, completing all the works in May.
“Before I was even informed that I had won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, I was planning on doing a huge show.
“When July came and went I assumed I hadn’t won so started working. I like to really test the deadlines my representative gallery sets for me.”
“Since I was a child my parents have been taking us to caves with paintings in it.
“Taking us to the Cango Caves, snake parks and informing us best they could about where they ‘assume’ we are from.”
Groot Gat is on at the Gallery in The Round at the Monument until July 2.
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